Laid Back Days

Attacked by the Flu

Our lives have been pretty laid back lately, with the flu going through my family twice.  I think we are finally done, just coming out of a six week cycle of all of us getting sick!  It hit us pretty bad this year!

Dressing Fun

As far as what I have been doing with Joelle lately, we have not followed any schedule or plan whatsoever lately.  She has thoroughly enjoyed dressing, and continues to be preoccupied with it.  Here are some pictures of her recent fashion picks:

Of course, I haven't let her out of the house this way yet (though I'm sure that day is coming)!
 

My Little Helper

We've also just been having fun doing typical things.  She has recently started "helping" me while I am making dinner by pulling a kitchen chair up to the counter.  I let her stir things, or spread butter on bread, or eat little bits of the veggies I am cutting, etc.  This seems to be a new pattern for us that is working very well.  Finally, she is not clamoring for me to pick her up every five minutes while I am trying to make dinner!  It's a good new balance that we've found, and I think she feels more content to let me do what I need to since she feels involved.  It takes a lot of the stress out of my evening routine!  Surprisingly, she is even capable of helping me unload the dishwasher by carefully handing me all the dishes off of the lower rack and the silverware (one by one, of course).  I had no idea an almost two year old would be able to do something like this, but she truly enjoys it and even though it takes me a lot longer with her helping, I think it is a very good thing to teach her at this early age.  

A little milestone for us- Joelle enjoying long spaghetti for the first time, at the counter while I was making dinner.

Enjoying Play Together

We did a couple of educational types of games the last couple of weeks, though none of them were planned ahead of time.  I think I am finding that a good balance for us is to have her closet shelves ready with lots of games and toys to play with throughout the week, but not to have any particular plan or schedule for when to use them.  With the way our life seems to go, some days we end up grocery shopping or running errands or going to a playdate when I had thought we might follow a schedule.  So, I like the idea of just having everything on hand and being able to pull out whatever we feel like playing with at the moment.

Joelle has really enjoyed this way of doing things too.  She likes to look in the closet and pick out whatever toy or game looks interesting to her.  She knows that I keep everything in her closet and sometimes she will lead me to it and say "game!?"  It is so cute!

She loved playing a game with colored buttons that I randomly put together for her.  She spent a long time on this!

She has enjoyed her sensory boxes many times the last couple weeks.  She also, has really loved playing with our Mr. Potato Head set, and she is starting to enjoy some dramatic play.  That was also surprising to me- another thing that I didn't realize a child under two could comprehend!  One afternoon, she was playing with her baby and we pulled out a stuffed animal cat and had the baby practice being gentle to the cat.  She loved that!  She kept telling the baby to be "gentle."  

We have also spent lots of time playing a "rock-a-bye-baby" dancing game along with the song that we have on a cd.  She also loves her plastic peal-able and cut-able fruit set, and we have spent lots of time playing with that and offering some to each other to "eat."  

This week, we played a game where I pretended to be a cat, crawling around the house and urged her to do the same.  I said, "come on kitten, follow Mama cat" and I would meow continuously.  It may sound silly, but it was a type of experiment to see if she is able to do this type of cooperative play.  Sure enough, she began crawling too right behind me and meowing too.  It was so cute!  She loved this game!  Then, of course, she wanted me to play this game forever, but after awhile my knees got sore so we had to move on to something else.

I am realizing though that it doesn't take a lot to engage her.  If I am willing to play with her and have an idea or some kind of a toy (any toy will do actually) she is very content to play along.  She is more interested in the fact that I am focusing on her than she is in what we are actually doing.  I think she is changing and becoming more of a child and less of a baby every day.  I love times when we can play together like this!   

Another fun game we have played is covering half of her crib with a blanket and calling it a tent.  She really enjoyed that too!  We played lots of peek-a-boo that way.

Color Sensory Bags

She has also really enjoyed the color bags that I made for her.  I recently went through all the toys and items in my house and separated them into bags for the colors green, yellow, red, and blue.  I bought a couple 50 cent reusable shopping bags that were the right colors to fill with all the objects.  Now, she has four color sets of random objects and toys.  I plan to add more cool things to them over time, but for now they are entertaining enough.  Here are some pictures of her playing with the yellow set and the green set:

Hair Bows

Another milestone that was exciting for me was the first day she let me put a bow in her hair and she actually left it in for longer than thirty seconds.  She has barely enough hair for me to do this in the first place, but I was so impressed that she didn't pull it out right away!  Since then, she even went to church one Sunday with a bow and left it in the whole morning!  So, maybe we've made a breakthrough in this area!  I got some cute berrets from my mom and I have some cute bows, so we are having fun with hair accessories. 

Tot School Letter Units

Last, but not least, I have seen the cute letter units that Carissa at 1plus1plus1=1 has started creating for two year olds.

1+1+1=1 ~ Tot School

www.1plus1plus1equals1.com

I started printing them out and decided to add some of my own things to them as well.  I bought 2 and a half gallon ziplock bags and am using one for each unit, organizing smaller things in smaller bags within the larger.  I'm working on completing my first three unit sets right now and we haven't used them much yet.  The A is for Apple unit, for example, will contain: All of the printables (most of them laminated except for coloring sheets), a board book about apples, a set of plastic fruit, a set of plastic apples, and apple stickers.  I will post more with pictures once I have the unit set complete and we begin using it a little bit.

We did a few of the printable activities last week.  Joelle really enjoyed the dry erase marker activities and I was surprised by her comprehension.  I thought all of this stuff would be over her head, but I was wrong.  Here's a picture of one of the pages that she did.  On this page, I asked her to color the apples and she did really well with it!  I did not point out the apples to her either.

Well, that wraps up the latest for us.  Thanks for reading.  I'll be posting more in a week or so.